A prose poem of expectations
Remember ‘67? The musical Hair?The new age croonings and celebrations of a world free of Cold Wars, napalm, lynchings? Long-haired bearded savants, beautifully breasted prophets, revelatory revelation of epidermis in song My Body. Cruelest of all: This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
Well, the Age has long since dawned, we are still waiting…
Harmony and understanding we were promised…
Russia set to invade the Ukraine… babies starving in Afghanistan, elsewhere…
partisan posturing, hatred, five dead January 6, 2020, the peak of insane storming with homicidal intent… systemic racism everywhere, black men risking extinction for traffic violations… flower power never had a chance…
Pandemic ravaging humanity, more so in poor countries than rich…
Sympathy and trust abounding,
We wanted a better world so much it hurt, so much we put on blinders of idealism… no more napalm, we prayed… no more Buddhist monks immolating themselves, no more bullets ripping through bodies of men, women, babies… no more lynchings, castrations, police brutality… Cold War a laughable anachronism, nuclear missiles converted into harmless sky splitting celebratory fireworks… everybody holding hands, copulating in blessed freedom…
Did we really believe humans would evolve into transcendent paragons of liberal virtues? That the millennia-old obscene pastime of rape would stop occurring on battlefields, in kitchens, allies, practiced by soldiers, strangers, beloved family members?
Countless children are being molested as you read this… elderly Asian American men and women brutalized by “patriotic” cowards… we could enumerate endlessly but what is the point…
Check out Wikipedia for more varied descriptions of this longed-for Age:
Knowledge in the Aquarian Age will only be valued for its ability to win wars…Aquarius is the house of the Woman… power-hungry elites seeking absolute power over others… revelation of truth and the expansion of consciousness…
It would be funny if it weren’t for the agony… justification of atrocities by major religions (who needs Satan when we’ve got Christianity, Islam, others)… widespread murder of trans women, particularly those of color…
culturally mandated sexual mutilation of girls… our country ruled by amoral billionaires…rape goes on and on and on… Nazi and Confederate flags flown side by side with pride. Are we doing better than we were in nineteen sixty-seven?
Good people are still engaged in struggle, no end in sight. How heartbreakingly cruel it was to feed our wide-eyed naive hopes.
~ Wry Welwood
12th of January 2022
Written in response to Scrittura Wednesday Prompt: What’s in a promise?
attention J.D. Harms.